Hi, Gunnar,
There's another way to look at this.
That is to suggest that professional practitioners of different kinds
including designers ought to be able to read and understand research issues
well enough that their practice can be informed and improved by research
findings.
That's how it is for physicians.
Physicians do clinical research to diagnose understand the problems that
patients bring to them. They draw on the findings of applied and clinical
research to solve those problems.
There are and should be some people whose job it is to do those kinds of
research. That is what a PhD is for. Our field needs more people with a PhD
to undertake serious research. But the majority of serious practitioners
probably don't need a PhD, and wouldn't want one.
It is the peculiar nature of life at university that we do expect many of
our teachers to be able to understand research at a high enough level to
teach, so many universities now expect all staff to hold a PhD. This differs
in some parts of the world, and in some places, it also has to do with
national policies or university policies that affect all university staff
regardless of discipline or subject field differences. This is not all bad.
Only when more designers and artists have a solid research foundation will
we see designers and artists rising into university leadership roles above
the department or subject-specific faculty level. If we are serious in the
belief that the design disciplines have something to offer other
disciplines, then designers who also conduct research have a role to play in
university governance.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean
Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:27:44 -0500, Swanson, Gunnar <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
On the other hand, the idea that some graphic designers would make better
researchers for some subjects doesn't imply that all graphic designers
should become researchers.
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